


There Is Thunder in Our Hearts

by lightspeedlucy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, M/M, Multi, No beta - we die like femmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23425915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightspeedlucy/pseuds/lightspeedlucy
Summary: In a world without Voldemort but with actual LGBTQ+ characters, Hermione works up the same courage she used in coming out to take a chance that all the stares she's been giving and getting from DADA Professor Bellatrix Black in her last year at Hogwarts are about more than a schoolgirl fantasy.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley (past), Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum (past), Lavender Brown/Pansy Parkinson/Parvati Patil (mentioned), Ron Weasley/Blaise Zabini (mentioned)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68





	There Is Thunder in Our Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the story I intended to write. The characters took over, and I, a weak, new fanfic author, decided I liked their idea better, even if there wasn't supposed to be any kissing at all. Oh, yes, there's kissing. Teen rating for a reason, kids! Anyway, I hope you enjoy. This has only been lightly edited so I reserve the right to make changes as needed,
> 
> This is probably a multi-chapter work, but don't hold your breaths on updates.

Now that NEWTs were over, including Hermione Granger revising after the tests to figure out if she answered anything wrong, she and Harry Potter were alone in the Gryffindor Common Room. The library had long ago closed and everyone else had gone to bed. They sat by the fire to reconnect, but Hermione was distracted by her romantic problems.

“Why do I keep falling for emotionally-unavailable women?” Hermione asked, frustration showing in both her frizzy hair and her anxious eyes.

“Because you realised you were too gay to continue dating emotionally-unavailable men?” Harry quipped back with an ironic smirk.

“Harry James Potter!” Hermione shouted, then looked abashed. “Uhm, you do have a point. Victor and Ronald, for all their enthusiasm, really weren’t emotionally available either. Ugh, do I just have a type? A type that drives me to despair?”

Harry stopped smirking as his face turned thoughtful. “No, I think you’re still figuring yourself out. You only came out a few months ago.”

“When did you become so emotionally clever?” Hermione asked, looking thoughtful herself.

“Oh, probably about the time I realised that I really wanted to snog Draco because he’s fit and I fancy him so much,” Harry answered with a big smile. “I should warn you that Slytherins get weirdly competitive when they’re dating you and you’re a Gryffindor. It’s not bad. In fact, it can be hot, really. But it’s really weird, especially since we Gryffindors get competitive right back.”

“Are you sure this isn’t some sort of Draco and you thing and that you are just projecting it on the rest of us?” Hermione looked septically at Harry. “Like how you both decided to snog in all the wardrobes and cupboards in Hogwarts?”

“I’m sure. Ask Pansy, Lavender, and Parvati, if you don’t believe me. Or, Ron and Blaise.” Harry replied confidently, a smirk returning to his face.

“I would rather not, thank you. I still think that I am scarred for life for having running across both sets of them having forgotten the rest of us existed. Here in the Common Room, no less.” Hermione shuddered. “It was bad enough coming across a tangle of Parvati, Pansy, and Lavender when I was coming back late from the library without then seeing Ron trying to get into Blaise’s pants the very next night.”

“That is totally fair. Anyway, you are now warned. Weirdly competitive, I tell you.”

“Warning received and noted, thank you. That doesn’t solve my problem of falling for my not-so-tall, dark, and emotionally unavailable professor.”

“Firstly, I think she’s less emotionally unavailable than you think. Secondly, in about 3 days she will no longer be your professor, as you are graduating.”

“Why do you think she’s not emotionally unavailable? Are we talking about the same Professor Black? What makes you think the same woman who has cackled gleefully every time she has defeated me in class is in any way emotionally available at all, let alone to me specifically?”

For the first time in the conversation, Harry looked uncomfortable. “Uhm. Draco may have told me some things about his aunt. Your name came up. I am really uncomfortable saying more than that without talking to Draco first.”

Hermione stared at him blankly. “And, you are telling me this now, why, if you can’t tell me anything else?”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck while looking somewhat like the uncertain boy he used to be. “Because you will talk yourself out of this otherwise. I love you, but you are entirely in your head too much, Hermione. You need to stop thinking and worrying and just tell her how you feel. Instead of talking yourself out of it and regretting it and sulking around Draco and me forever.”

“I do not sulk!” Hermione responded hotly. Harry merely mouthed the word ‘troll’ at her. “I was eleven, thank you! I was overwhelmed and the friends I **thought** I had made on the train had instead been bullying me.”

Harry had the good grace to look abashed at that. “Sorry, Hermione, but I stand by my point that you need to tell her how you feel. Remember how miserable I was until I finally talked to Draco? Time for you to woman up and do the same thing. You’re a Gryffindor for a reason, so show it.”

“That was the worst pep talk that I have ever heard, but you are right, regardless. Go to your boyfriend. I have to go speak to a certain raven-haired professor with a bad attitude. Don’t wait up for me.”

Before she lost her nerve, she quickly left Harry with a final wave, sure he would be heading to Slytherin almost immediately. She checked the Marauders Map to see if Professor Black was still in her quarters. She was. Not for the first time, Hermione wondered how the Marauders had managed to find all the professors’ personal rooms but decided now was really not the time. She needed to steel herself for what she was going to say to Professor Black. Her stomach was full of butterflies, and her palms were sweating. She was terrified that she was making a terrible mistake, but maybe that was a good thing. Make the terrible mistake, get rejected by the professor she had been falling for for years, eventually pick up the little pieces of her shattered heart, and try to continue to live on despite the pain.

“Oh, Merlin. Harry is right. I am a Gryffindor. I can do this.”

She finally arrived at Professor Black’s quarters, the door not in any way suggesting that the most feared professor in Hogwarts lived behind it. This was undoubtedly as the professor desired. She had not been at all shy in making it clear that she at best tolerated her students during class and didn’t want to see them otherwise. It had been a struggle with Dumbledore when she had been initially hired to get her to agree to even minimal office hours in her classroom. The idea that any students would be welcome at her door was utterly laughable. Which was, of course, why Hermione found herself at it and knocking before she could stop herself. The door was flung open almost immediately. 

“What!” Bellatrix Black roared at Hermione, dressed in one of her trademark corset dresses, her dark curls almost moving by themselves as she looked around to see any other students. “What do you want, Granger? I already told you that I can’t help you revise after your exam.”

“That’s not why I am here… Bellatrix.” Hermione looked nervous but somehow also self-assured. “I am done with my all classes and my last exams. I am no longer your student.”

“Congratulations are in order then, I suppose. However, I am not in the mood for games, having successfully survived another year with mewling babies. I am quite looking forward to other adult company and not seeing any of my students until September, so if you don’t mind…” Bellatrix moved to close her door. 

Hermione steeled herself and put a hand on the door, drawing herself up and adopting what she hoped was an appropriately assertive look. “I am no longer your student. And, I am another adult. Bellatrix.”

Bellatrix stopped closing the door and looked dumbfounded at Hermione, like she’d never seen her before. “What are you playing at, Granger? This isn’t funny. Go back to your House, and I will forget you were ever here.”

Hermione noticed that while Bellatrix’s words were typical of her as a professor, she looked both uncertain and unsteady, her eyes trying to look anywhere but directly at Hermione. Maybe Harry was onto something, after all. “Oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” she thought before closing the distance between them.

Bellatrix Black, perhaps the greatest Defence Against the Dark Arts professor ever to teach at Hogwarts was utterly taken by surprise as Hermione Granger, the greatest witch of her age, kissed her. Which, to be fair, was not something that ever happens when confronting practitioners of the dark arts. Both of them were further surprised when Bellatrix reacted by moaning and kissing back, eliciting an answering moan in Hermione. 

The kissing continued a few moments more with more mutual moaning until both women finally gathered enough thoughts to remember they were in a Hogwarts hallway with students still in the castle. Surprising at least Hermione, they somehow kept kissing as they stumbled into Bellatrix’s door. Bellatrix immediately pushed Hermione around and against the back of the door and used her to close the door while pinning her still for what was developing into quite the snog.

Finally, both broke the kiss, panting for air, staring wildly at each other, both of them utterly shocked at each other, at themselves, at how utterly bizarre it was that kissing the other felt so right when it was so wrong. 

“Fourth year,” Hermione panted out to Bellatrix’s utter bafflement. “That’s when I think I started wanting to kiss you. But I went through a lot of denial.”

“I admit that I noticed you eyeing me this year. But I didn’t imagine you were eyeing me up for a snog, Hermione,” Bellatrix cackled, though it seemed to lack its usual bite.

Hermione blushed before suddenly looking put out. “Like you haven’t been looking at me all year, either. When Harry is asking me why you’re always watching me, you’ve been doing it a lot. This is not just about a, what did you say in my fifth year, ‘a silly schoolgirl crush that leaves nothing but the fading thunder of a summer storm.’ Nicely poetic, by the way, if exceedingly cruel. Anyway, the thunder hasn’t faded, I can hear it as loud as ever. I think you know that and hear it, too.”

“That’s pretty poetic yourself, Her… Granger,” Bellatrix replied, verbally stumbling as she realised she definitely should not be using her first name right now. Boundaries must be respected and kept. After they’d already kissed. Bellatrix sighed. Her professorial career had been so fulfilling, too.

“I think after kissing like that, we should be on a first-name basis now,” Hermione responded bravely. “Plus, you called me Hermione once already, Bellatrix.” Hermione emphasised the name while boldly looking her in the eyes.

“Regardless, you are still my student,” Bellatrix stared down Hermione as she seemed about to interrupt her on that point, “at least in the eyes of everyone else. Yes, I can have no effect on your grades or NEWTS and in three days you’ll not be a student at all, but all anyone else is going to see is my taking advantage of my position as a professor. I won’t last another year. I may not enjoy children much, but I do enjoy my independence and the fact that the pittance I get here is mine alone.”

“I, I understand. I’m sorry to have bothered you and almost ruined your life. I’ll go now,” Hermione turned to open the door, her mind already running as fast as her body suddenly needed to, tears already forming in her eyes. Why wouldn’t the door open? She needed to get out right now! Suddenly, she was spun around.

“No,” Bellatrix said calmly, looking her in the eyes, pinning her back against the door with her intense gaze.

“No?” Hermione responded uncertainly, still needing to get away, still needing to run, tears streaming down her cheeks, utterly humiliated.

“No, you won’t go now. No, you haven’t ruined my life. No, you haven’t bothered me. Well, you haven’t bothered me in a bad way. No, you don’t understand. No.” Bellatrix calmly explained with, was that kindness in her eyes?

Hermione didn’t respond. She felt utterly bewildered, overwhelmed, and utterly humiliated. Tears kept falling.

Bellatrix finally took uncharacteristic pity on her. “Here, let’s go sit on the settee, have some tea, and we can talk all about this.”

Hermione followed Bellatrix without question.


End file.
